Madness is Catching
by Soubrettina
Summary: After nearly a year of everyone avoiding the matter, Elsa has decided what to do with her difficult-to-handle prisoner (and it's better than what his brother had in mind)... Hans is exactly as tragic (or not) as the reader chooses to believe he is.
1. Chapter 1

As he is sitting on the bunk with his head bowed, slumped right down into himself, Elsa can see the rope-burn on the side of his neck, still an angry purple against that near-translucent white skin, almost as fair as her own.

"I think you know that that was unworthy of you, Prince Hans,"

He doesn't respond, though she sees his lip curl at the evocation of the dignity of his birth. So much the better.

The reminder of his capacity for brutality is almost welcome- it never helped to let that skin draw her attention- the reminder that Hans was in fact barely older than she was, known everywhere as someone's kid brother (and so really shouldn't have been proposing to anyone without at least telling King Magnus first- she could only have imagined he was trying to tie Anna's reputation to his own before Magnus and herself could compare notes about him), or of the reports that he'd been a sickly child, and still burst out in red wheals on contact with hay. "I don't believe you were in that much distress. Any more than you'd done it out of unbearable remorse."

At long last he raises his head and smirked at her. _Good_. She's probably- _probably_- getting the real Hans Westergard, or- she is starting to suspect- the nearest thing that exists to a real Hans Westergard. Over the last year she's met so many.

The valiant gentleman who'd not realised that he'd taken the wrong approach and had only meant to save the country might have washed for a while, particularly when he excused his fierce manner as a desperation to avenge/save his dead/dying bride (part of the problem being the way the story tended to slip.) It might have been convincing if said bride had not, against everyone's expectations, been very much alive and, not incidentally, furious at his having deserted her.

(Actually it was Olaf, of all people, who had helped Elsa stitch together what had taken place- Olaf was not good at keeping up with events but he was certainly sensitive to Anna's moods. Strangely, Elsa could let go the sound of a sword unsheathing behind her head, but the picture of Anna- already dying- broken-hearted and bewildered, full of self-recrimination- for that, there were no excuses.)

Then she'd seen again the innocent, rather silly young man who had so endeared Anna in the first place, who had cracked open to reveal something monstrous- raging and threatening, insinuating obscene things about the queen's nature, about her sister, her father, her parentage, and notions about the provenance of her magic that the Duke of Westleton had never thought of.

(Westleton, meanwhile, had pleasingly proved both as pathetic and as stupid as he looked; he'd not liked Hans from the start for being too benevolent, but what had really stung him was having been cheated into condescending to pity and console the man over the loss of Anna.

"He was acting all alone! I had no _thought_, did not _imagine for one moment_ that he had designs on your Majesty's crown! The man's a scoundrel! He's vicious, pernicious and meretri- pernicious, malicious, capricious and- vicious, terretric- he's a _swine_!")

That had been the first week.

A month later he'd been sent back again, preceded by a missive from King Magnus declaring that his brother had not committed his crimes in the Southern Isles but if Queen Elsa wished him to stand trial her neighbour would not hide him from justice.

Unfortunately Hans in the intermediary had found a new persona, who would go for days refusing food, had screaming nightmares and burst into tears of terror and anguish at unpredictable moments.

Autumn had been drawing in by then, the weather uncertain, bringing everyone indoors and rapidly closing the season for sailing. The castle should have been big enough for a single prisoner not to be shredding the nerves of everyone present, but a prince of a neighbouring kingdom- even if said kingdom seemed to have lost all interest in him- was not the sort of prisoner one could lock away and forget about.

Elsa herself didn't care for what she named to other people as 'German doctors', men who called themselves 'nerve specialists' and that she thought of, secretly, as 'crazy doctors'- not since Anna had been absent one day when Elsa had found herself all iced up, when Kai had panicked and called a doctor, who had summoned three specialists who had shone lights in her eyes, taken samples of her fingernails and asked her a lot of impertinent questions about everything from her cycle to the patterns of her ice and how she'd felt about Papa to where the name Olaf came from (she really had no idea.)

So she wondered if there was a stab of vindictive pleasure in inflicting Hans on each one in turn- though if so it had backfired, they were fascinated by him, and he'd seemed to enjoy the attention. Or at least he had until he had been sent back to his brothers on their advice.

"You realise," she says now, "it rather gives strength to what your brothers have been claiming?"

He sighs, a flicker in that unpleasant grin.

"I know. Poor_…_ what was that word? _unbalanced_ Hans. Some sort of sad monster, to be locked away."

"Oh, come now. Nobody used the word 'poor'."

That gets a brief flicker of amusement, which fits with how he'd been when he arrived yesterday- gently mocking, familiar, facetious, flirtatious even, entering the main courtyard like a strolling player ("I'm back! Any mail?"), and side-tracking Elsa's conversation like an old friend, complimenting every sign of returning health, congratulating her on Anna's engagement. It had distracted from the fact that he'd kept his greatcoat on, which even in the cells seemed rather hot for early summer; presumably that was where he'd been hiding the stolen ship's rope that he'd used to string himself up from the beams.

The greatcoat looked shabby, and the uniform under it- the same one in which he'd been pulled out of the harbour and arrested a year ago- is a dead loss- now grey, all the embellishments frayed, noticeably too big for him now.

Round, green, _young_ eyes turn up at Elsa, dilated in the poor light, surprisingly blank, the expression oddly- unpleasantly- familiar- reminding her of cold iron shackles and desperate protestations to stop asking of her what she couldn't give.

Really, it should put her off these interviews altogether. Madness would seem to be catching (but who had caught it from who?)

"Is that why you did it?" she asks, as gently as she can.

"What? For fear of going back?" His hand covers the welt again; does his voice have a faint shiver of forced casualness in it, or is that deliberate? "I can't say I fancy it. Shut up for good, great-nephews uncertain whether I was real or something their parents made up to scare them…" A really visible shudder this time. _Interesting_.

"The _invisible_ Hans?"

"Please. _Don't._" He turns and gazes abstractly at the window. "I thought doctors weren't supposed to talk about that kind of thing."

"They didn't. Anna talked about it. It was true, then, what you told Anna?"

He gives her his loveable-rogue smile.

"I lie a lot less than you think I do, you know. You've got to be strategic. One can't go round saying the grass is pink. People aren't _completely _stupid."

"Why d'you really do it, Hans?"

He waved a cavalier hand.

"You weren't going to. Neither you nor Magnus dared to put your name to it. It never looks good, does it, to hang a prince? I suppose I've got _that_ left."

"You couldn't stand any more… anticipation?"

"Well done for not saying 'suspense'. I think I was just… bored of waiting, to tell you the truth."

"You hanged yourself out of _boredom_? "

"Well, it was something to do. And I'm not overly inclined to make Arandelle look good, under the circumstances. Letting people say you drove me to it…"

"A pyrrhic victory, Hans."

"True."

"You didn't really want to die, did you? Hung up in a cell like some common wretch, never mentioned in polite company again. That's not your style. You wanted me down here, all concerned and guilty and fussing over you."

"Now you're just making it all about yourself." Then suddenly he's sitting forward on the bunk, almost pressing against her, looking almost straight up at her, and Elsa strains her ears to make sure the guards are close outside- she doesn't really want to iceburn him again, not after last time when he'd carried on squeezing and they had to call Kristoff to unstick his fingers from her face- a bottle of vodka and a guard outside to hold back a _screaming _Anna- it hadn't been pleasant having to brush fragments of his skin off hers. "It could be that way, you know- perhaps I'm not noticing it, but… you know, you're a very beautiful woman, Elsa."

"You can stop that right away."

"I don't even mean it like that. You know how different you seem, these days? There's moments you _glow_, you know that? No, not literally, I mean in your expression, in your eyes, in your voice… I just can't imagine what it's like with you and your sister. I know you made yourself a living snowman the shape of a child, when someone made of snow was the only thing you could hold. There's _something_ that comes off you the way that the cold used to do-"

He reaches out for her, and she almost doesn't skip back in time.

"Hans, this is the trouble with being a confirmed liar."

"Yes." He sighs. "Yes it is. Too late." He looks up again at the beams. "_To hell with it…"_

"Stop it. I didn't come down to fuss over you."

"Of course not-"

"I came down to sentence you."

"…oh."

_Didn't see that coming, did you?_

"I assume you know of the mines in Selkis Island?"

"Of course, your Majesty… I mean, Arendelle's a beautiful country, but I wasn't trying to steal it for its lovely glacier valleys."

Elsa declined to disagree, though she was faintly incredulous that Hans had such a concept as something being beneath stealing.

The mines _had_ been lucrative. They might soon be again… if it were possible to work on them before the end of the summer.

"A bear," she explained. "Or it seems to be a single bear. Nobody knows where it makes its den, they can walk for leagues, swim too. It seems to be a single bear because it's so _big_, almost twice the usual size and completely unafraid of men. In fact it seems to have a taste for men. It came nightly until half the mining towns had to be abandoned. There's even stories that it wears armour, although that seems unlikely. But it is like something from a saga. Only this isn't a saga. Arandelle is a modern nation through those mines, as I'm sure you know well." She didn't wait for whatever answer that solicited, but when she looked, she need not have worried. Hans looked spellbound.

"Yesterday a mine foreman came to me- his men want to work, but they are not warriors. He cannot ask them to work under this horror. It came to me, it was like a monster, it needed Beowulf, or Sigurd… and then an image came back to me." She turned on him a smile that she had already had practiced.

She hadn't known what to expect.

She certainly hadn't expected to see a man suddenly so tremblingly, dazedly _happy_.

"You mean…"

"_Yes._"

"I… my sword…"

She went to the door.

"Bring it in, Aksel."

A guard came in, bearing…

"But… but it… you _didn't."_

Aksel approached the bunk, and offered Prince Hans the handle of the sword. He drew it with a hand that only trembled slightly; and if Elsa shuddered at the sound of it being unsheathed again, she barely noticed to see his gaze run up the re-forged blade.

And then his expression sag a little.

"This hasn't been done very well, you know."

"Sorry. It was the best we could do."

* * *

><p>"He accepted, then?" Kristoff said, as she sat down to dinner. She must have looked sufficiently pleased that the subject spoke for itself.<p>

"His freedom for the head of the great bear, yes. _Without the bear attached._ He leaves tomorrow, the boat will put him down and… we'll see."

Anna sniffed, and gave her attention over completely to dropping bread-pills in her soup. A princess really ought to have known better, but she didn't, and why should she?

Kristoff put his spoon down and gave Elsa one of his resigned-to-mad-royals looks.

"He's going to get killed, isn't he?"

"Very probably."

"He's going to get _horribly _killed. There won't be anything left to bury."

Anna made a sound like: _"Hmph!"_, which everyone tactfully ignored.

"Of course he is. He's not going to die old in a sanatorium; he's going to make a _completely mad_ last stand against a ravening monster. It's absolutely impossible… completely impossible… and yet…"

Elsa couldn't stop the smile from creeping up on her. _Glowing_, indeed.

Kristoff shook his head.

"Madness," he said. "It's catching!"


	2. Return of a Free Man

It was when evening was starting to make itself known, a few weeks past midsummer- the nights had actually started going fully dark for a few brief hours- when Kristoff came home (for it had, without him noticing, become 'home') to find Anna waiting on the steps, appearing to vibrate like a taught string. The shadows of the wall fall across her feet, but her gleaming hair is still lit up rose-gold in the gloom.

Her bounding down the steps demanding to know what had taken him so long was usual, although his having to go in and find her was happening more often now and they were none the worse for it- but this urgent and persistent _waiting_ had a meaning to it. Sven agreed, from the way he bounded up to her and stood, staring at her in expectation.

"Hey," he said, putting a hand on Sven to stop him attempting to but the answer out of her (he'd never done it with Anna yet, but still) "what's wrong?"

"Guess who's dead?"

"Guess who's dead?" The question expanded ripples of weirdness. "I don't know, any number of people are dead."

"Shut up."

That really isn't like her.

"I'm sorry. Who is it?"

"Hans."

"What?"

"Hans! _Hans_ Hans."

_Oh well now she's repeated it…_ he doesn't say that, though.

"Yes, I know who you mean."

"Of course you know who I mean, I…"

She swallows whatever the next word was, and puts her hand over her mouth, staring at him with her face all full of _strangeness_.

What, even now?

Oh, he's not jealous, exactly, not like that. He knows Anna lost all attachment she might have had to his highness as soon as the creep- the deformed sick inadequate waste of flesh and skin- had laughed at her for having thought that they were in love. But he does know that the wound didn't completely heal over right- that for all Anna's appearance of endless resilience, the hurt is still somewhere deep down inside her and just occasionally threatens to blister up again whenever she remembers it. Like now.

"Alright, I'm sorry. Come here, then."

She falls into his arms easily enough, swaddled so completely it almost feels like he could wrap around again to make another layer; and from here he can feel her trembling. Trust Anna to start trembling _now_, but he thinks he gets it. Actual danger means nothing to Anna, but she's still shaken by the things that Hans makes her _think_.

"The _Gertrud _has come back from Jadskar, they were told some of the mountain men had been up there. They'd found an enormous bear with no head on it and they handed over… a bundle of stuff- there's broken bits of sword and bow and a belt buckle, and a very worn and bloody silk glove… and some bones. Human bones. All wrapped up in bits of a grey coat, and, and it's edged with brocade of waves that some of our guards recognised." She swallows a bit. "Apparently there were a lot of fox tracks around, which explains why there isn't… isn't any more left."

"Alright, alright. Deep breaths."

"I'm… I'm…"

"Sh-ssh. You don't _have_ to be okay." He manages to get a look down at her face, where she's fitted, easily now, against him. She looks pale and lost, though perhaps she's just a bit nauseated.

Sven grunts at her, and sticks his lips against her ear, which makes her, if not smile, then let the lines of her face relax a little. Her weight is on him now, and her eyes are closed, like she intends to sleep there for the night, which would be very nice if he could stand on the spot until morning. As he can't, he presses a kiss into the top of her head, just as the shadows cover them.

"You can cry if you like, you know."

"I'm not gonna _cry!_ After all he did-" She gets choked up again for a moment. "I really don't want to. I don't want to be sorry he's dead, but… I can't hate a bunch of bones. He just _had_ to put himself beyond hating, didn't he?"

"Comes to everyone, in the end."

"You're telling me?" She pulls her head up. "Yeah, that's a thought. I still pre-deceased him, and he wasn't sorry for _me_. I can think what I like."

There's no answer to that, so he kisses her forehead, her nose, and her mouth, though stops when he realises Sven is giving him a Look, and he doesn't even know about the guards on the edge of his vision.

* * *

><p>Elsa's still sitting in the parlour, her accustomed place in the window-seat where it's cool, with her knitting- a good gauge of how she is- calm enough to use her hands, too distracted to read- though it's more obvious when she puts it down at once when Anna comes in.<p>

"There you are. Have you been pacing about the castle all this time?"

"I was standing out there waiting for Kristoff. He was late."

Kristoff looked at Elsa apologetically.

"I didn't say a time."

"Well, you were later than I thought you'd be."

Elsa took Anna's hand in one of hers- strokes it a little too warily.

"You're cold." Kristoff can see her expression- her firm elder-sister face just about masking her real worry.

"Only because I was standing around outside. I'm fine."

"Really?" Elsa's eyes stray to Kristoff, looking for confirmation.

"Really. I'm going to find dinner for Kristoff."

"Did you eat by yourself?"

"I… I'm not really hungry tonight."

That seemed to be permission enough for Elsa to get up out of the chair and put her arms round Anna, squeezing out of the words: "I told you, I'm _fine…_"

"Of course you're fine."

Kristoff can't see Anna's face, but tell from her posture that her eyes are cast down again.

"Is it really all over, now?"

"Not quite. I've had to write to Princess Margareta-"

"Princess Margareta?"

"Hans' niece, King Magnus' eldest daughter; she's about your age. Hans left a will naming her as his next of kin. I think she's the nearest relative he doesn- didn't actively dislike. I've said I'll receive members of the family if they want to come to take back his body."

Anna groaned.

"Is this going to end in an official reception?"

"A quiet one, I promise. The Westergårds might have let me do whatever I would with Hans but I doubt we're expected to hold a ball about it."

"Do we have to do anything? It was an execution. We don't owe it to _him_."

"Yes, I realise that. But the bargain I gave him was to kill the bear, for his freedom, which he did. Distasteful though the idea is, he was a free man; fortunately all he seems to have done with that freedom was to die from the wounds he sustained in winning it. He's therefore free to be buried as himself, not as a criminal. So we can commiserate Princess Margareta on that unfortunate loss, the Westergårds don't offend us by commemorating him as an unfortunate one of their own, and everyone's happy."

"Except Hans?"

"Given that the choice appeared to be between locking him up in an asylum or death by beheading, I'm not sure even Hans comes out of it too badly."

"Elsa, I don't _mind_ Hans coming out of it badly."

"I'm afraid it's late for that now."

* * *

><p>In fact there are only two of them, after the servants and secretaries; though surprisingly enough King Magnus was one. Perhaps it was to supervise his daughter.<p>

"No," Elsa says. "It's to put an end to any suggestion of bad blood between us."

"Bad blood? I thought he sent those shipments of grain last winter as reparation."

"I think it was strictly an unofficial gesture. Be careful, you'll drop your flowers."

Anna tries to pull her cloak over more of her dress- the deep doorway of the castle isn't quite keeping the hammering rain off her, nor the armful of lilies she was carrying.

"And the lilies are an official gesture?"

"They're an official gesture to Margareta. Which will be rather spoiled if you drop them in a puddle first."

"They're dripping." Anna gives them a vigorous shake, spraying water over the courtyard, which naturally doesn't look to good when the visiting party enters the castle gates.

In a small crowd of servants and clerks is a tall man, looking up to give them a gentle smile as he's tilted sideways holding a futile umbrella over a pale girl who was fighting against the wilting weather, weighed down as she was in a collapsed hat and a streaming mantle and having to heave her skirts spreading heavy behind her through over the stream running against her over the castle courtyard cobbles.

When they come up the steps it seems she's taller than Elsa, despite the weight her skirts, the far end of which is still in the courtyard. King Magnus removes his hat for the ladies and everyone curtseys to everyone else, except for the gentlemen of course. Anna doesn't really know how to look when she thrusts out her lilies (she just can't look empathically sad- she just _can't_ insult someone with a lie like that) , but she gets a smile followed by Margareta lifting her eyes to hers even against the water pouring down from her coiffure. And her eyes are large, unusually round, and a peculiar shade of green that's almost golden. Anna just about manages not to shudder.

Margareta's now sitting with a whole sofa to herself- her skirts spread out quite a long way and nobody really wants them dragged over their feet. Her ramrod posture may be one of impeccable deportment, or it may be formidable corseting- like her uncle she tapers sharply from the shoulders, and the black-gloved hands still politely clinging to the bouquet as she shivers are surprisingly large. But the braids looped round her ears and rolled up in a chignon are dully brown, and must take her rosy mouth full of big white teeth from her mother, and that almost distracts from the prominent cheekbones in that pale, spare face, with the long, mobile eyebrows; and she's s very quiet, and keeps those eyes mostly on her flowers.

Anna hadn't been sure how she expected King Magnus to be, but whatever it had been, it wasn't it. He was neither hard-faced nor brooding, nor gross and noisy. He was admittedly possessed of a beak-like nose, but with the vague half-smile and bright eyes that went with it he looked vague and friendly, like a man who never thought beyond the next hunting-trip. He's fussed over his daughter rather a lot- peeling off her mantle, carrying her train, spreading blankets on the sofa- all in words of concern for Queen Elsa's furnishings, but he follows it with:

"-don't look so embarrassed, Sternchen. You were given the office, I'm here to attend you; you have to be magnificent and you're still doing it very well."

"I f-feel a f-fool."

She looks so pathetic it doesn't seem fair for Anna to stay silent.

"It happens in Arendelle, see. Even in the ordinary way of things we get some lively weather. You should see what's happened to some of my dresses. Of course Elsa would tell you that I manage to find something to do to them whatever the weather does, but that's the view of someone who puts everything in dust-covers, so I open her wardrobe and it's like a row of lavender ghosts. Ghosts that are light purple, I mean, not the ghost of some dead lavender, haunting my sister's drawers. I mean, the drawers she keeps her things in, not, not, I'll pour the tea."

Kindly saving Anna from further blunders, Margareta sneezes.

"Hey. You're not catching a cold, are you, Meta?"

"I th-think the water's warming up, Father."

"Suit yourself. Don't sit there tragically catching your death on your Uncle Hans' account, whatever you do. Though I suppose a slight sniffle would look well at the funeral. I don't think there's anyone else who'll have one."

"Will there be a lot of people to see?"

"Of course. It's still a public occasion."

"I'm sure we can all bear the grief will dignity and fortitude, Father."

"Yes. Dignified grief goes down very well with the nobility; especially when they can all gather round for it."

"Will they? I didn't know Hans had so many friends."

"Don't be silly, Meta, it's not about friendship, it's about allies, or at least potential ones. Wonderful thing, a death. So uncontroversial. I can rely on you to look after the ladies, I know."

"Why can't they be with their husbands?"

"Their husbands will be busy."

"Only during the funeral."

"Darling child, they're not coming for the funeral, they're coming for the politics. This is a _working_ funeral. Are you alright there, Princess Anna? Oh, think nothing of it, why have a saucer if it doesn't do anything? A funeral can be far better than an official assembly; there are no expectations so you can actually have meaningful discussions. In fact at that funeral in Burgundy, Wesselton the Younger and I were so busy discussing wool prices we forgot to go to the cathedral. Have you drafted the service yet, by the way?"

"Mostly."

"Well, make sure you have plenty of music."

"That would be nice, Father."

"You see, you can have useful discussions while the organ's playing. You have to shut up for the lesson and the prayers. Hans has at least died at the perfect time, really. So much bickering to be laid aside after last summer- with respect, Princess Anna."

"I understand, your majesty. It all sounds just like what Hans would have wanted."

Actually what Anna doesn't understand is why she's not followed her impulse to run out of the room or just scream. It must be because Margareta looks enough like Elsa just before she starts getting frosted over that Anna at least doesn't want to upset her. Or maybe she just doesn't want to give the impression that she's crying over Hans (which she never has), even though for the first time since she unfroze there really is something to cry about.

Fortunately it's then that Olaf comes in to check out the newcomers and introduce himself. Sometimes a warm hug was best from someone who was eager to give you one anyway.

* * *

><p>At least at dinner she has Elsa there, occupying the head of the table in serious and patriotic purple, probably oblivious to how the sight of her shoulders bared by the deep wide collar is making every other woman shiver on the clinging-cold evening. It's somebody else to make conversation, which Elsa does- thank goodness for Elsa's long hours shut away alone with her books, honing her spookily well-ordered memory- by asking after the health and progress of a seemingly endless list of Westergårds one by one; and Margareta is just as forthcoming, seeing as every name has something to follow it, a visit somewhere, trouble with a new baby or a vaccination, a garden improved on or learning to read or to ride; that takes them from soup to fruit quite painlessly, as it brings Margareta to life as herself instead of as a funereal envoy. All the Westergårds seem to have some kind of occupation and it became gradually clear that Margareta's was in teaching them to her little brothers and her swarm of cousins.<p>

"Eight little brothers," she clarifies, with the trace of a smile, "and a twin sister. I used to take them all out for long walks in the morning, but only the two little ones will get up early now. They're just about getting the hang of flying a kite; only Fjodor's so tiny that if it's the least bit blowy I have to hold him still."

"Is it often blowy?" Anna says.

"Oh yes. The deer park round the summer palace is on the nearest thing the islands have to hills, and all the islands get the wind that comes straight off the sea and carries on to the next. It's notorious for wind. We export wind. There are wind mines."

"Really?"

"No, not really. I was being hyperbolic."

"…oh."

There's another silence, in which there can be heard footsteps in the corridor.

"I remember this about the castle now," Magnus says, "it's built before the idea of servants' doors. The staff aren't hidden away, everyone gets to walk in the same halls. I do believe if your majesty or Princess Anna came to Samsborg you'd be struck by the squeamishness of the architect. It's like he had to pretend that the rooms mysteriously tidied themselves. Seems to be built to make sure staff know their place and we don't see what the staff see. Unless we're young Hans and develop a fascination with back passages." He looks up at the _clunk_ of Elsa- Elsa!- dropping her fork and splattering cherries across the table. "I believe I should change the subject."

"No, Father," Margareta sighs. "Now you've started I believe you should elaborate."

"What, about Hans running feral for eight months? He must have been, oh, eight, nine. Disappeared into the backstairs one night and for eight months all you'd see would be a quick glimpse of him disappearing from a room as soon as anyone came into it, but for a skittering inside the walls at nights. The nanny gave up in the end and would just leave sandwiches out for him at the back of the library, unless she could bait him out to force a bath on him. Every so often the maids would find a nest in an attic somewhere and return all the spare clothes and books that he'd stolen recently. When the summer came he moved into the park somewhere, and moved around between the follies. Until a new tutor came who tracked him down and finally gave him a good beating, and that was the end of that. Still, seemed to do him good. He'd grown nearly six inches and it was the first time I'd ever seen him without a cold."

In sympathy, Margareta sneezes.

* * *

><p>The coffin is undecorated but for a brass plaque, which just about accommodates the words <em>ADM Prince Hans Gregor Albrecht Brynjolf Westerg<em>_å__rd von de Sydlig-Øer._

("I know," he'd said, or at least the Hans Anna had met at the coronation had met and mistaken for the real one had said. "It's long and a little ridiculous, like my face.")

Anna doesn't want to see- the whole idea has been making her go cold and feel sick all week. But in a way, that's why she's here. She'd rather know than imagine it forever.

When the lid is lifted, she presses her fingernails into her palms, and… and there it is. And really, there's not a lot. The coffin has mostly been filled with padding just to lay the few bones out on, so few it's hard to tell whether they're straight or not- a collar bone, a few ribs and back bones, two bones of an arm and a few hand bones, the top half of a skull; were the bones not a fresh off-white, he could have been dead for hundreds of years. He looks so _small_; the pommel of the sword, with a few inches of broken blade, lies about where his stomach was- it seems ludicrous that he could ever have lifted it.

She's so amazed that she turns around wondering what's missing when she hears the thud of Margareta hitting the floor.

* * *

><p>A foreign princess collapsing in a castle when two countries are trying to bury a hatchet over the coffin of a prince is a matter to be taken seriously- two doctors worth of seriously. It's worth it, even when they come down and confirm it was the result of combining high emotion with wet socks and tight-lacing sending all the blood to her feet.<p>

Though their time wasn't entirely wasted. It was only natural that King Magnus had been pacing up and down waiting for them and it was only in sympathetic distress that Queen Elsa had managed to freeze the floor.

His ankle isn't broken, and neither is the _entente_, in fact by the time the doctors leave he's trying to soothe Elsa even as she stands by the footstool trying to see how her powers can help with the swelling.

"You're worse than my daughter. _She's_ only upset because she couldn't make everything perfect. She will insist she has no romantic idea of redeeming her uncle, but because she keeps all the younger ones in line, she counts that as her only failure. It's not her fault she's another of his missed chances…"

As perhaps the last of those 'missed chances', Anna feels she probably has leave not to listen to this. They don't see her go, and- despite those honest old-fashioned corridors- not even the long red one with the shiny, slidy floor- she meets nobody on the way back to the anteroom where Hans, or what's left of Hans, is laid out.

Where the doctors still are. Arguing. Sort of. One whispers: "_Are you insisting that nobody will notice?" _And the other- Dr. Hoffman, Anna thinks, the family doctor, replies: "_Not where it is. Not a layman."_

They fall quiet, and Anna realises she must have been heard. She carries on, upstairs,. Whatever mysteries Hans has sprung from beyond the grave, or at least while waiting for the grave, she is determined to ignore.


	3. Caskets and Headcases

The dingy light that Anna goes to bed by isn't helping, for it was just the same. Just the same as when another lone figure in black walked up that corridor- smaller, much smaller, a far simpler figure than cut by Margareta, and the corridor had been far colder- maybe, on reflection, because Elsa had been on the far side of one of those doors, or maybe because the place was so very empty.

_It's not fair. Not fair that I meant it and she doesn't. Not fair that she looks the same, but has no idea… no idea! Even Elsa-!_

Anna lays her forehead down in her hands on her vanity table. _Stop it. Stop all that_. She manages to conjure a picture of Kristoff, when she'd pressed him on the subject of what came before the trolls and there had been nothing in the little that he remembered that sounded good. At least the servants had been there to keep Anna safe and well-fed.

When they'd had the conversation a few months ago, Kristoff had been surprisingly blasé about it, or at least had carried on driving the sled.

"Why are you looking guilty like that? You didn't know me then."

"I know but… well, with going to the funeral and everything, you know, alone, and not being able to see Elsa and worrying about whether I could do anything for her… I've felt, well, you know, pretty sad sometimes; but then when you say that I think I had a whole castle and the servants and everything, and- and, when you say how it was for you I think- maybe I shouldn't have done."

"No, no, don't go down that road. Seriously, it's not a competition, right? I had it hard one way, you get different problems. Like, I was very small and didn't have to stand up in public and be polite to people about it, right?"

"I guess."

"And I was alone, but then I didn't have an Elsa to deal with."

At that Anna pushed herself under his arm.

"I'd still choose Elsa. Elsa was always worth it."

"Of course she is."

"You're good with her, you know that?"

"There's no need to make your sister sound like a baby. I don't _do_ anything for her."

"Yes you do. She's vulnerable and you help her feel okay." She snuggled her face against him, breathing in the smell of leather and lanolin and pine and, well, reindeer and more than a suspicion of under-washed man, and it was wonderful. "And you make me feel okay. Better than okay."

"Mm-hmm. Can I make you feel okay some other time, when I'm not driving?"

"Oh, promises, promises-"

Anna sits up sharply out of her reverie because that was the point that they'd hit a rock, or a tree-root, or something, and come to a very un-erotic collision of heads.

She watches the river of rain that was pouring down the roof below her window (there was not a lot else to see with the low-hanging clouds.) _Happier thoughts._ By noon tomorrow the castle will be free of Westergårds, perhaps forever- if they do show up again, from the sounds of it, it's probably going be 'what thirteenth brother? Seriously, did we have one?' (And that was a happy thought, though a rather pitiful one: what must it be like to be ashamed of your brother, or your father's brother, to neither be able to defend them nor want to?) It might stop raining. Or it might not, and she could ask Kristoff to come and help tidy the attic with her- an obscure attic where there was no room for anyone to come in just in case they wanted any help, just when they were getting on very well indeed just the two of them. (Anna took to heart all the times she'd been told over the last year that marriage was a serious step that wasn't to be rushed into. That was why she was making sure she got plenty of practice at it.) That's a plenty happy enough thought to lie down with, listening to the rumble of raindrops surging right over the roof-tiles.

Before that they're going to go to church together, apparently. Well, at least when they're listening to the Bishop, Anna won't have to try to find things to say to Margareta.

Though 'we' had better be including Kristoff. They _are_ engaged, and he's been at her side for a couple of parties, but it had seemed a little convenient that the first time a foreign king arrived with his daughter had been when Kristoff wasn't around… Anna rolls over in her bed, wondering how the dispute might go (she never argues with Elsa exactly, oh no, but if Elsa is trying to hide Kristoff away…)

"Of course I'm not," Elsa says, as she brushes her hair the next morning, only just visible in the mirror behind the great ivory cloud pushed over her face- she always has to separate it to brush layer by layer. Dressed in what might be grey but looks lilac in the dim light, she looks so pale and ethereal that if it weren't for her voice she might just be a trick of the light, a reflection bounced between the fjord and the mirror to make that slender figure appear to move. "It's not exactly a sensible long-term policy; Kristoff is here to stay, and if I made him invisible it would start to become…"

"Disloyal? Cowardly?"

"I was going to say 'conspicuous'."

"An invisible Kristoff would be conspicuous?"

There's a suspicion of Elsa's off-centre smirk under that silky curtain.

"Wouldn't he just?" She shakes another section of her hair out. "I _was_ trying to draw attention away from some of the sleeping arrangements in these apartments these days."

"What? Me and Kristoff have separate rooms!"

"You_ have_ separate rooms, yes. Quite a long way down a cold corridor."

"And we go to bed in them. And wake up in them."

"Well that's alright then. I don't have to learn anything that's going to shock me and my innocence will remain intact."

"…um. Yes. Yes, that's good. It's all good." _Okay_… well if Elsa thinks she's not ready to hear anymore then yeah, Anna can go along with that. Not like there's anything she would _hid_efrom Elsa exactly but she doesn't want to offend Elsa if there's stuff she doesn't want hear about. She can find something else to say. There's loads of other things to say. Like the view out of the dressing room window of, of…

"I see the _Gertrude_'s preparing to leave already."

"Well, they have to make a living."

"They've kept the black sails."

"I suppose they're not going to waste a set of sails. Anyway, they won't stay particularly black forever. And all ships love a story attached to them."

"I guess… are we wearing black to church, Elsa?"

"No, no. We're not in mourning. Something sombre. Your grey silk will be fine."

"Um, it won't. It's, um, being re-dyed brown."

"Brown? Brown silk, you?"

"Yes, I know, but it got covered in coffee!"

"Oh _Anna_!"

"Hey, that wasn't my fault! There was an _earthquake_!"

"Oh, _that _day." Which was weird. Arendelle didn't have earthquakes, so when Anna had got that strange swaying feeling and the table had started violently rattling Elsa's tea-set, she'd thought that she was having some kind of fit, and she wondered how she was doing that to the whole table. Then when she looked scared at Elsa and saw her sister staring in amazement at the pastries dancing on the cake-stand, she realised it wasn't just her. Elsa tried to put down the milk jug but missed, sending a white spray over the tablecloth and as for the coffee that Anna was holding… "I found out about that, you know. Do you remember that there was a strange boom and a big cloud on the horizon? The _Gertrude _reported that a volcano blew up in Selki's Island. Not a big one, but big enough."

"It can't have been very big if we only know now."

"Well, you know what it's like with Selki's Island; all the news we get here is about a month old."

"Oh. Yes, I guess so." Anna fiddles with the belt of her morning-dress. "Do you think Hans was still there for that?"

"I really couldn't say." Elsa lifts the side of her hair up as she starts braiding, revealing that she's looking up at Anna, her eyes wide and bright. "It's nearly over, darling."

It goes on for a while longer, though.

It's not a funeral, as such; the coffin isn't in the chapel with them; really it's more a service about the matter that King Magnus is here at all- though it's not clear whether he's listening to the Bishop admonishing them all to _send not to ask whom the bell tolls_, as he keeps fussing over his daughter, patting her hands and asking in whispers whether she's warm and well enough. Margareta is pale but upright and doesn't actually look like she requires this much nursemaiding, in fact had she been alone her performance would be marked by its serene dignity and sociable, considerate restraint; rather undermined by being implied at every turn to be overwhelmed by it. How queer that she's not just almost twenty but clearly quite capable, and yet cannot refuse all this protection and help that seems to make her helpless!

The church isn't quite empty, there are the few who are always there of course, and a handful of what Anna thinks are guards- she was looking at the floor as she came in because it was so hard to meet anyone's eyes and not show anything in her face that she didn't _mean_ to and people would take it wrong.

She's not hurting anymore, honestly. It's not personal that the idea of a face she'd both cherished and loathed now being eaten out of existence makes her feel…

"_And you as well must die, belovèd dust,__  
><em>_And all your beauty stand you in no stead;__  
><em>_This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,__  
><em>_This body of flame and steel,_…" it's a good reading, though she has heard it before. That would do. _Yes._

"_Hey,_" Kristoff whispers in her ear, "hush now." His blessedly warm hand encloses hers. So much for secret thoughts.

Well, other secret thoughts then.

She looked down at her hand wrapped in Kristoff's lying in her skirt- which it turned out was ready and looked better than she'd hoped, and once it was on, with her hair up and the neck high as it was, didn't suit her badly at all! The only off-putting thing was the way her skirt looked a little like a puddle of melted milk chocolate. Or chocolate fondue. Slightly distracting.

Wow, but Kristoff's hands were big.

Big feet too. She's never really looked at boots like them.

She wonders if, if she mislaid Kristoff somehow, she could use his boots to find him again.

Not that she thinks it likely to forget what Kristoff actually looks like. That was a very weird story, now that she thought about it.

It's not like foot size matters that much.

She mentioned the conversation to Elsa once, over hot chocolate in front of the fire.

"Would foot size matter to you, Elsa?"

"In what context?"

"In the context of whether you wanted to marry someone or not." Elsa looked puzzled- perhaps at the idea of her marrying _anyone_, Anna wasn't sure. Perhaps it was the wrong question to be asking… "I mean when do you get that into the conversation, anyway?"

"I've no idea. I suppose given how Hans dressed, you could just look at his genitalia and make a guess."

Anna had spent a few minutes drinking her chocolate and asking herself what she'd really heard, then another few minutes trying to un-hear it. It was really _weird_ when Elsa made jokes.

For goodness sake! Go back to Kristoff's hands.

So perfect for enfolding her hand completely. For holding her.

She wonders how big his wedding ring is going to be. Whether it'll feel different then when he squeezes her hand, among other things.

Are they burning incense in here? They never normally did that in the castle chapel… perhaps the flowers were standing in dirty water.

Think of Kristoff's hand spread wide over her shoulder, suddenly involuntarily clutching her tight…

He was holding her hand quite tight now, actually. So much strength it felt like he could protect from anything, always controlled, delicate. Like those big hands were just made to hold a little baby…

A little baby that needed changing. What the heck was that _smell_?

"_There will be an end of chiefs, and there will be an end of chief's sons, and there will be an end of chief's wives- and then-"_

And then the Bishop stops because one of the doors at the end of the chapel has crashed open. Not a squeak and a clunk of an ordinary entrance, nothing that could be silenced with a look of enquiry or disapproval, no collective susurrus at some people's scatterbrainedness or timekeeping would do here.

It is in fact, very ill-timed. Could not have been more inappropriate a person to turn up, to ruin this moment.

Anna screams, and it's a while before she feels ridiculous.

It's a _good _scream, Kristoff will assure her later. Not sissy squealing. Right from the gut. Powerful. Would give a team of wolves second thoughts.

She still instantly isn't sure _why_ she screamed. But it doesn't seem inappropriate.

The guards and servants are suddenly all on their feet, straining for a view as if for the entrance of a bride.

Indeed there is one between them- for there are, in a sense, two- who could be said to be wearing white. Except it's only by inference white, under all the blood.

The head is bigger than Hans' own head. It's bigger than his chest. It's so big his hands don't actually meet when he's got it hugged round the neck, with its almost-closed eyes and lolling mouth giving it a crazy look of being astonished to be hugged so (as well it might have.)

Oh, and from the full length of the church it's obvious that it has been dead for quite a while. And that Hans has been covered in blood- _covered,_ rivulets having run down his face like someone tipped a bucket over his head- for some time, too. It's so bad that people are taking a step towards him and then falling back again.

And then the Bishop says:

"…_and there will be an end to chief's sons, and…"_

A guard- (Corporal Haugen?) steps out from the isle, and Hans somehow manages to push past him- and Anna hears what must be his voice, though it's like no voice she ever heard-

"…_Elsa…Queen Elsa…"_

And Corporal Haugen looks up to the royal pew.

Elsa stands up to her fullest, straightest, where-do-those-extra-inches-come-from height, and comes down the steps to the central aisle. Anna isn't sure whether or not anyone else can see the round bubbling ball of magic that she's got cradled ready in her hand.

She can see Hans' face now, fixed on Elsa's… in so much as it can be fixed. It's Hans, just about, but not Hans at the same time- a great violet stain covers one temple down to eyes that don't match up and under that noisome veil something is out of shape, imperceptibly _wrong_, an expression that is incoherent.

As he comes close to Elsa- who has gone marble-blank, immovable as a monument of a millennium or more- _Elsa ad infinitum_- Anna sees him try to speak again- or at least his lips move.

Elsa merely nods.

"It is done."

When Hans falls, it still isn't neat. Holding the bear's head doesn't help, as he falls on it and then rolls off, and his head ends up smacking Elsa on the foot. Anna briefly wonders if being headbutted in the foot is painful (if she hadn't seen it it would sound very questionable.) Elsa's face only looks furious for a split second before, oh _yes_ Elsa, she throws the magic she's been holding into the very dead head of the bear beside her, freezing it solid. Then she does cave in and say:

"_Help_."

Anna and Kristoff need no more encouragement, and Haugen (if that's who it is) is soon there, and even Margareta- though she bends over Hans, although Anna can more or less forgive that.

"Is he dead, Elsa?"

"I don't think so."

It's not too bad until Haugen tentatively rolls the bear's head aside to lift the whole body lying in the aisle and…

"Good gods," he breathes, then looks up embarrassed, muttering, "sorry."

"_Ooh, _no kidding."

"That is a _very_ broken arm."

Elsa looks over Anna's shoulder at what they've seen- there just shouldn't _be_ so many ways in which that left arm should be twisted.

"You know- Dr. von Rodham would have to see it, but I think it's rather worse than that."

"Wait, what?"

"I'll explain later. Corporal, please take this man to hospital and have your men do… something with his… tribute. Preferably elsewhere."

Fortunately for Corporal Haugen, he has men subordinate to him to call on.

Now that the head is frozen above everything else, it takes four men to lift it up in a chorister's cassock- which actually causes Hans' eyes to flicker open for a moment. By now Kristoff and Haugen are sliding the parts of a guardhouse stretcher under him, trying tactfully to make Margareta get out of their way. It must be her pale face, more so for the black bonnet, that he sees, when he blinks in seemingly sluggish thought and manages to mutter:

"Who's dead?"

Kristoff looks at him with a smile.

"Guess."


End file.
